Your important lesson for the day
by digby
From Rick Perlstein:
Recently a young blogger, in a nice profile of the diverse [survivalist]subculture as it thrives now, unfortunately described preppers as a "nascent" movement. That ain't so. As I've insisted earlier, "too much of what we observe today on the right we act as if started the day before yesterday. Always, we need to set the clock back further—as a political necessity. We have to establish deeper provenances. Or else we just reinvent, and reinvent and reinvent the wheel." Let's think about this: for generations we have shared our American with Americans who fear change, fear difference, fear you and me, fear everything falling apart. So much so that they organize their lives and politics around staving off the fear—which often entails taking political action that only makes America more fearful and dangerous in for everyone; which destroy the trust and love it takes to sustain communities; and who reinforce one another in their fear to such a degree that the less crazy among them surely play a positive role in spurring the more crazy to the kind of awful acts we see around us now. We need to better understand where that comes from, and why it is not going away.
So let's get down to work.
Please, please read the whole thing. His point is so important and so often ignored: the conservative American political culture has always been with us ... and always will be. And yet, somehow, every time they lose power (for whatever reason) liberals assume that they have been vanquished for all time. We won, huzzah! Ding dong the witch is dead! But it just ain't true.
Wingnuttia is as American as apple pie (I'm sorry to say) and it will always be with us. Progressives must accept this and be prepared to exploit the openings when conservatives are weak and defend when they are strong. It's the ongoing state of the American political condition. Reinventing the wheel every few years is a huge waste of energy and opportunity.
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